Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (movie)

There's enough story presented in Wednesday's first episode of "Empire," the new Fox melodrama about a New York City family feuding over control of its record label, to sustain several TV seasons. A long run would be a good thing for the show's creators, Oscar-nominated director Lee Daniels and Danny Strong, screenwriter of "Lee Daniels' The Butler," and for Chicago, which is not the series' setting but does play host to the shooting of "Empire" in the Cinespace Chicago Film Studios on the Southwest Side. There's certainly potential in this show: Daniels' track record of telling stories audiences respond to (he also made...

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There's enough story presented in Wednesday's first episode of "Empire," the new Fox melodrama about a New York City family feuding over control of its record label, to sustain several TV seasons.
A long run would be a good thing for the show's...

With critical praise for the civil rights drama "Selma," Chris Rock's comedy "Top Five," and the social satire "Dear White People," it looks as if Hollywood has been on a roll this year producing movies showcasing black casts...

Aging punks take heart. Chrissie Hynde has returned to demonstrate that getting older is just a state of mind.
At 63, the tough rock chick owned the Chicago Theatre stage Wednesday night with the same confidence she exhibited at the beginning of her...

Gabourey Sidibe will join fellow Oscar nominated actors Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson in Lee Daniels' upcoming pilot for Fox, “Empire,” according to the Hollywood Reporter. The series will begin filming in Chicago this month but will be set in...

Say you were watching a post-Super Bowl news conference featuring the coach of the team that lost on the final drive. You'd expect someone to ask for his reaction, no?
Or say two players from the same team had snubbed each other on national TV. Reporters...

Robin Thicke had company when he came to Chicago over the weekend to perform at V103's 25th anniversary concert at the Allstate Arena.
The "Blurred Lines" singer -- who seems to perform or make a promotional appearance here every other month --...

Talk about your beasts of the Southern wild! In director Lee Daniels' jacked-up bayou melodrama "The Paperboy," taken from the comparatively sane 1995 potboiler by Pete Dexter, a screen full of charismatic actors do their damnedest not to turn...

I can count on two hands the number of times I've watched full episodes of "The Oprah Winfrey Show," but I've read two of her other "O, The Oprah Magazine" books — 2010's "Love Your Life!" and 2009's "Dream Big!"...

The 2014-15 TV season was already shaping up to be a watershed year for diversity on the major networks, thanks to the success of ABC's "black-ish" and "How to Get Away With Murder." The most-watched new comedy and new drama of the...

Say, did you catch Cumberbatch? What about Downey and Duvall? Or Dano? Don't forget Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones. Or Reese unwashed — that was wild. Could Winslet get any earthier? Who knew Wiig would find another level of crazy? Can Bill Murray...

Fox Broadcasting is overhauling much of its prime-time lineup after a disappointing season.
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Awards season is a boisterous clamor for attention, full of prestige picture releases and endless marketing dollars strewn to support them — all with the goal of taking home a few statues early next year. But amid the ado there are exceptions: The...

TORONTO — Watching Steve McQueen's achingly brilliant "12 Years a Slave" at the Toronto International Film Festival, I was struck by many things. The film's artistry — script, performances, imagery — is significant. The movie is beautifully,...

The year's first serving of Oscar bait has arrived on a silver platter in the form of "Lee Daniels' The Butler," a star-studded historical drama starring Forest Whitaker as an African American butler working at the White House through multiple...

"Lee Daniels' The Butler" is neither as good as it might have been nor as bad as survivors of "The Paperboy" may have feared. An ambitious and overdue attempt to create a Hollywood-style epic around the experience of black Americans in...

"Lee Daniels' The Butler" is neither as good as it might have been nor as bad as survivors of "The Paperboy" may have feared. An ambitious and overdue attempt to create a Hollywood-style epic around the experience of black Americans in...

NEW YORK -- Lee Daniels is never one to hold back on hot-button topics like race and the movie business.So when the director of “Lee Daniels’ The Butler” is asked why he thinks it was hard to get his new movie financed, he comes back with a direct...

The new trailer for Lee Daniels’ “The Butler” shows an up-from-his-bootstraps man moving, Zelig-like, through U.S. presidential history, demonstrating how “one man overcame his past.”But for at least one of the actors working on it, the fact-based film...